Tomorrow, when the Supreme
Court of the United States
hears arguments in Columbia v. Heller, a case that struck down the District of Columbia’s
draconian gun control law, a discussion of Latin grammar may play a
significant role.

The second amendment
confuses many modern readers because it contains a construction increasingly
rare today: an absolute phrase. In English, an absolute phrase is formed
from a noun or pronoun and a participle. It modifies the entire sentence
in an unspecified way. Examples:

·The claymore being sharpened, Cameron entered the cave.

·Pipes skirling in the fog, the Cameron men passed through the narrow defile.

It should be abundantly
clear that in these examples no causal relationship is implied between the
absolute phrase and the main clause.

The absolute phrase is not
native to English, having been introduced rather late in imitation of a Latin
construction called the ablative absolute. (see Matt
Rissanen et al., History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in
Historical Linguistics [Berlin & New York: Mouton de
Gruyter, 1992]) . As in English, a Latin ablative absolute consists of a
noun or pronoun and participle. But in Latin, word order is largely
irrelevant, the function of words being indicated by inflexion. Thus in
Latin “Vir amatfeminam”
and “Feminamamatvir” mean the same thing – the man loves the woman.
To say “the woman love the man,” it is necessary to put woman in the nominative
case, and man in the accusative case: “Virumamatfemina” or “Feminaamatvirum”.
Normal Latin word order is subject, object, verb, e.g. Feminavirumamat,
but this can be varied to give emphasis as needed, a feature of inflected
languages that is largely missing in English.Inflexion and word order are two of many reasons why non-Latinists who
translate English into Latin using a dictionary end up producing total
nonsense.

This is not an elementary
Latin tutorial so I will cut this short and observe that the ablative case is
one that indicates “from”, “with”, “by means of”, “in the time of”, or when
used in the absolute form, some kind of relationship, never explicitly
stated, to the rest of the sentence.

Remember that: the
exact relationship between the ablative absolute and the rest of the sentence
is NEVER explicitly stated. Oracles liked to take
advantage of quirks like this, and so did James Madison.

A couple examples:

·Urbe capta, Aeneas fugavit

This one is easy. “The city
captured, Aeneas fled.” A causal relationship between Aeneas’s flight and
the capture of the city can be inferred.

·Paupere honeste vivente, fur ditatur.

This one is harder. “The poor man
living honestly, the thief prospers.” There is certainly no implied
causal relationship; the poor man’s living honestly does not cause the thief to
get rich.There is an implied temporal
relationship, though that of course is not the point.Irony is the point.The best English rendition might be “The poor
man lives honestly, yet the thief prospers.”

So now we come to the Second Amendment, written by the
accomplished Latinist James Madison, who, I think it could be convincingly
argued, thought in Latin when he wrote anything important.

A
well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear
Arms, shall not be infringed.

There you have the absolute
phrase – “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” – springing from Madison’s Roman mind.

The
founders — most of whom were classically educated — would have recognized this
rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example
from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of
the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum
nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows
logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear
neither civil war nor death by violence.”

Actually Freedman’s
translation is rather poor – “While Caesar rules the land” would be better.
The point however is that Freedman is, as we have seen, obviously wrong
-- the ablative absolute does not always introduce a main clause that “flows
logically from the absolute clause.” Sometimes it does, sometimes
it does not. It is a construction that delights the mind with its
sibylline subtlety.

I suggest that Madison
intentionally used an absolute phrase in the Second Amendment because he knew
that a causal relationship would NOT be inferred – at least not by any
well-educated person of the time. If he wanted to say “Because a
well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state,” he would have just said
that. He did know English, after all. Instead he chose to use a
classical form possessing nuances that are no longer properly understood
by the vast majority of lawyers and judges, far less by journalists.
Fortunately the Supreme Court includes a few justices who will
understand this subtlety. And unfortunately several who will not.